The Trouble With Too Much Awareness.

By Les Mottosky

Awareness is a gift...until it isn’t.

Used well, it helps us navigate, reflect, and grow. But when overused, it mutates. Instead of a compass, it becomes a corral. We stop living and start monitoring. Constantly scanning for threats, analyzing every input, calculating every outcome. Not present, just prepared. Not safe, just tense.

And here’s the trouble: hyper-awareness feels like clarity. It tricks us into thinking we’re in control, when really, we’re dissociating. Managing life, not living into it. We become performers. Alert, efficient, exhausted actors for an audience of one. Others ask how we do it all. The truth? We stopped feeling and started optimizing.

But humans aren’t spreadsheets. We’re animals. We’re nature. And like nature, we’re built not just to survive, but to experience. Growth is more than progress. It’s sensation, emotion and wonder. The feeling of wind as you summit a hill, and the impulse not to analyze it, but to roll down the other side.

There’s wisdom in disorder. The “hunter’s mind”, that restless curiosity for what’s next wasn’t an ancient pathology. It was adaptation. A drive toward life with a whole-hearted exploration.

Maybe what we need now isn’t more vigilance. Maybe it’s also less; less scanning. And instead, sensing, intuition and trust.

Especially, more trust in our intuition. 

While awareness can lead to guardedness if we direct it outside ourselves, it can also lead to connection if we turn it inward. Oftentimes, we discover the security we seek isn't something that can be found in the world. Security is a human construct. As a rule nature doesn't acknowledge it. 

Safety isn’t always something to earn. Sometimes it’s something to feel. And every once in a while, the most radical thing we can do—the most human thing—is to stop calculating our next move…and tumble downhill, laughing.

TAGS: #Audacious Strategies #Wisdom In Leadership #Nature At Work #Humility #Courage Is Our Nature #Adaptation As Innovation

Les Mottosky

Adaptation Strategist // I help organizations turn creativity into their competitive advantage by aligning leadership, culture and strategy to unlock adaptive innovations.

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lesmottosky@mac.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/les-mottosky-9b94527/